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Thie post is shared at: Wordless Wednesday at The Jenny Evolution Not So Wordless Wednesday at That Suburban momma Wordless Wednesday at In The Moment Wordless Wednesday at Sakura Haruka Wordless Wednesday at Create with Joy

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For Memorial Day 2013, I asked my husband to plan a camping trip. He picked Curlew Lake, which is in northeastern Washington. He wanted to pick a place that was far enough away so we wouldn’t be crowded with other campers, and someplace sunny (my requirement). That meant travelling about five hours away to get […]

For Memorial Day 2013, I asked my husband to plan a camping trip. He picked Curlew Lake, which is in northeastern Washington. He wanted to pick a place that was far enough away so we wouldn’t be crowded with other campers, and someplace sunny (my requirement). That meant travelling about five hours away to get to the camp site. It sounded fun, we could get there and see some Washington state sites on the way via road trip, right? ROAD TRIP! We haven’t done one of those in a while. Well, things didn’t go quite the way we planned. A bridge collapsed over a major interstate here, one of the main US highways (HWY2) over the mountain passes was closed to one lane, so our trip took a little longer than expected. Once we got there though, Curlew Lake was uncrowded, secluded and looked perfect for some family camping fun. Eastern Washington topography is different than western Washington, it’s more rolling hills and shrubs than evergreen trees and mountains. It was gorgeous though, and beautiful, and the boys had so much fun. I would definitely recommend going up there for anyone in the area. We had such a fun time camping, and having family time with just the four of us.

Road trip! These wind mills line Interstate 90. From the ground to the tip of the top turbine, it spans 41 stories tall. These pictures were taken from a rest stop, and don’t do justice to how strong, tall, and majestic these windmills look from the highway.

This is a really big rock. No really, see the tiny, tiny boat in the corner? It’s called Steamboat Rock, and it’s the middle of the national park ground.

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My oldest recently turned eight, and this year, he asked for a Minecraft themed birthday. If you’ve never heard of Minecraft, think back to those old, 80s style DOS games and graphics. Minecraft looks totally like that. Except, this game only came out a few years ago. The good thing about Minecraft is that it […]

My oldest recently turned eight, and this year, he asked for a Minecraft themed birthday. If you’ve never heard of Minecraft, think back to those old, 80s style DOS games and graphics. Minecraft looks totally like that. Except, this game only came out a few years ago. The good thing about Minecraft is that it is totally easy to recreate, as everything is made out of pixelated blocks. The basic premise of the game is that the main character, Steve, goes around and digs, or “mines”. There is dirt, coal, and eventually, diamonds. You get a pick ax. There are also monsters like creepers, zombies, ghasts, and these spider things which I hate. All in block form, which kind of make them hilarious. The great thing about Minecraft is that you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want to, because you can program your own world. So for kids like mine, it’s a great game to flex out their computer programming skills!

I spent some time on the Internet researching “Minecraft Parties”, and it basically came down to two things. 1) there was nothing pre-made for Minecraft, unless I wanted to pay big bucks on Etsy, and 2) it’s all about blocks and paper, and I could do it myself. So with three or four days of prep time, lots of printing, gluing, and taping, I put together a Minecraft party for my kiddo. We wanted it low key, so we only invited eight people since he was turning eight, had one scavenger hunt, one craft (freeze paper stenciling their creeper shirts to take home as their “favor”), and lots and lots of fun! I hope you enjoy the party!

Some of the decorations. The happy birthday banner, and of course, creepers and ghasts. The boys cut out the square clouds for the background.

TNT! aka licorice and juice boxes with red construction paper wrapped around it, and TNT printed in the Minecrafter font. You can see my minecraft paper blocks in the background. They were a huge hit.

More ghasts. They’re a combination ghost/octopus. I made them from square paper plates, with crepe paper legs. Totally easy!

These were the creeper plates. The green plates I glued the black construction creeper faces, then I glued a clear plate on top so people could actually use the plates to eat.

And of course, we had creeper juice (water bottles with “creeper juice” in Minecrafter font on white paper labels) to go along with the food. Renaming the food with Minecraft labels was really fun. The kids totally loved coming back for more “creeper juice” or “coal” or “torches” instead of regular old pretzels and blackberries and water.

My “coal”, aka blackberries.

My “torches”, aka pretzels. I was cracking up, since the kids had a blast with the torches. I also had raspberries on a separate plate. So kids were putting raspberries on top of the pretzels and telling me “look! it’s a lit torch now!” I had three separate kids tell me that, all at different times. 🙂

What the final food set up looked like. (big thanks to L.Hong for providing me with this picture!) Besides the TNT (licorice), torches (pretzels), coal (blackberries), I also had chocolate cake with green frosting for dirt squares, and green rice krispie squares that they could stick together to make their own creeper. Also raspberries to light the torches. 😉 For the grown ups we had Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, eggrolls, chips and hummus.

The banner is made of foam, I cut out the squares on top to make it more “minecraft-y”. The letters are felt letters I bought at Michael’s. I stapled the whole thing to crepe paper, and was pretty amazed it held. My kiddo asked for it to stay up all week, and (knock on wood), it hasn’t fallen down yet!

We also stuck some creepers outside. I made them from square plates. One plate for the head. I cut one plate in half for the body, and half of one for the feet. It was a big hit, different kids would run around with them in the yard, chasing each other.

My husband had this great idea of making the kids do a scavenger hunt before they got cake. In the spirit of Minecraft, they had to find different colored blocks to make up different combinations. (We had a whiteboard listing all the combinations and rules, but the kids took it over during the course of the game before I could snap a picture). They could trade with each other to make their combinations, and get cake. In reality, we hide 204 of these one-inch foam blocks in our yard and let them go forth and find them. It was great fun! I’m not sure which was more impressive, that they spent so long finding them, or that we actually got all 204 blocks back at the end of the party.

The kids had to have six blocks in different color combinations in order to get cake. Here’s some of the different combinations they came up with during the scavenging.

CAKE! I just had the cake made with green grass on top. There is a little Lego Steve and Lego creeper there as well from the Lego Minecraft set.

Since it was my son’s 8th birthday and not my birthday, I didn’t stress too much about planning games or entertaining the kids. They ran around in the yard, played in our tree house, and fought with the paper plate creepers. 🙂

Instead of party favors in a bag, we had everyone make their own Creeper Shirts! (we used the freezer paper method). I did two groups, the “happy face” creepers, and the “frowny face” creepers. The shirts were $3 at Michael’s, so very cheap, and the kids LOVED them! It was also a VERY EASY CRAFT to do with a large group of kids.

Overall, there was a lot of prep work in the few days before the party (especially in regards to all the paper crafting), but it was a lot of fun. Because in the end, it’s just about a bunch of blocks. 🙂 PARTY ON, I hope you enjoyed the pictures, and got some good ideas about any future Minecraft parties!

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Every year, we take a trip up to Skagit Valley to visit the tulips. You can check out our trips in 2010 and 2012 and see how much the boys changed (and how little their love of mud puddles have not changed 🙂 This year the weather has been perfect, so I bundled the boys […]

Every year, we take a trip up to Skagit Valley to visit the tulips. You can check out our trips in 2010 and 2012 and see how much the boys changed (and how little their love of mud puddles have not changed 🙂 This year the weather has been perfect, so I bundled the boys up and we went for a day trip. I love going to the tulips because it reminds me of when I was pregnant with my oldest, and waiting, and watching the flowers bloom as I waited for my little guy to appear. Plus, they are just beautiful, and we have FIELDS and FIELDS of them here in Washington. If you haven’t made the trip to visit the festival, it runs through the entire month of April (depending on bloom), and it’s awesome!

No, this isn’t Holland. It’s Mt. Vernon, WA, U.S.A. 🙂

Welcome to Tulip Town! My oldest had to jump in order to be tall enough to be in the picture on the left.

I spy with my little eye, a hidden preschooler.

We visit the tulip festival every year, since it occurs around my oldest’s birthday. Look at how much he has grown! :sniff:

Stand by the tulips and pose, boys. This is the best that I could get.

Mainly, they were way more interested in the mud, and mud puddles, than the tulip flowers.

I wonder what made these kid size boot prints…

If only there was some clue to tell me.

Splish splash, some one took a mud bath.

If you are local and haven’t been up here, go! It’s so beautiful, and the festival runs the entire month of April.

Pretty, pretty tulips!

Up close and personal with a tulip.

Sometimes, you just gotta let them lecture you, and try not to laugh at the expressions on their sweet faces.

Happy, happy kiddo.

I let my oldest have my camera, and he took this shot! Proud mama right here, such a nice capture!

My youngest thought he was so sneaky making faces while we were taking pictures.

My favorite picture all day. I usually only get serious looks from him, I was so glad to be able to capture a real smile for once.

If you look closely, my oldest is holding up his little brother in order to make him tall enough to fit in the face hole for the picture. Awww……

They even had face painting inside the barn!

At the end of the day though, it was mostly two little boys doing this.

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My oldest son had a birthday recently. How did that happen? I swear, it wasn’t that long ago when I was answering the phone, overdue by almost a week, telling people “no, the baby’s not here yet. STOP CALLING.” Now I look at him, all big smiles and attitude, and think, where did that time […]

My oldest son had a birthday recently. How did that happen? I swear, it wasn’t that long ago when I was answering the phone, overdue by almost a week, telling people “no, the baby’s not here yet. STOP CALLING.” Now I look at him, all big smiles and attitude, and think, where did that time go? Last year for his birthday, partly because we were overwhelmed with just the amount of stuff that we have in our small house, and partly because we know that our oldest is very empathetic and caring, we introduced him to charity giving. So instead of birthday gifts, he decided to ask people to donate to The Starlight Foundation (which helps sick kids in hospitals) instead. We were very proud of him!

This year, of his own accord, he asked to pick another charity to donate to for his birthday. We picked clean water, since I come from a third world country where clean water from the tap is not easily accessible. Of course, he also asked for a birthday party with his friends, but in lieu of presents, he asks everyone to donate $8 (because he is turning EIGHT!) to help him reach his goal. So please, visit the Charity Water donation page, and if you feel inclined, please donate and help him out for his birthday wish. 🙂